1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to Internet web browsers and search engine output, and more particularly to a visual Internet search engine results index or summary that enables faster perusal of search engine output on both a hyperlink and graphical level.
2. Description of the Related Art
The meteoric rise of Internet use reveals the demand for information from the personal and trivial to the specifically technical and even vital. The Internet is the name given the worldwide network of computers available for public access that provides email, FTP, telnet, and web page access. As used herein, the term "Internet" refers to both this worldwide network of computers and any network of two or more computers supporting browsing. "Web pages" is the shorthand term given to Internet computer files available for browsing on both a text and graphics basis. Browsing of such web pages provides an enhanced user experience as hyperlinks, or web page entries, leading to other web pages or other Internet resources allow users to obtain additional information on subjects associated with the web page currently being viewed. One of the first browsers was named MOSAIC and was developed by Mark Andreeson while at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Internet activity, and particularly Internet commerce, are of particular interest at this point due to relevant commercial aspects.
With the rise of the internet, an Internet connection (including those by telephone) becomes a link to the sum total of world civilization available electronically and made accessible by research, academic, and governmental institutions. Geography becomes much less of a limitation to the accessibility of information than does bandwidth. Any form of electronic communication can carry Internet information provided the user and the server have compatible modems or other interface devices.
With such a vast reservoir of information available to those accessing the Internet, it has become a difficult question as to how to find pertinent information on a textual search basis. Logic is not currently available that allows computers to derive meaning from the text files or other data that they store in their memory. Consequently, literal string searches are the only manner in which information is generally retrieved or accessed on the Internet. Such retrieval often includes the use of search engines such as ALTAVISTA, LYCOS, INFOSEEK, EXCITE, as well as hierarchically ordered lists, including YAHOO!
One of the great drawbacks of current search engines is the output that they provide to the user. Often, such results are in the form of a list of hyperlinks with a cursory, if not cryptic, excerpt of initial text present on the web page. Few, if any, search engine interfaces provide means by which to gauge graphically the contents of the web page. Such review or perusal of some summary form of a web page, even if cursory, provides a significant amount of information as the form in which graphical information is presented often indicates to a significant degree its content.
For example, professional web pages often have a very polished look and can be discriminated at a variety of levels of resolution. The use of marginal framing on the left hand side is a currently popular technique by which access to the entire web presence of an organization can be delivered throughout all of its web pages. However, hobbyist or personal pages have a different look in general, often highlighting the subject matter most pertinent to the designer of such web pages. For example, the American Kennel Club might have a web page highlighting figures of canines that would be easily distinguishable at almost any level of resolution from an entire computer screen down to a miniature thumbnail summary of the first web page screen. Well-recognized logos or the like would also stand out in order to provide the user a means by which web pages could be evaluated quickly and either discarded or marked mentally or otherwise for future and/or closer review.
As current search engines do not provide such an interface, and as such an interface is highly desirable in order to quickly filter through the vast information available from the simplest of searches, it would be of significant advantage and development in the art to provide such an interface.
Additionally, greater advantage could also be provided by allowing such an interface to reside either on the server side of an Internet connection or on the client or browser side thereto.